Continuing our interview with Atom Egoyan on his recent “The Sweet Hereafter“,which opened on Friday, the Canadian auteur discusses some of his directingstrategies. Like fellow Canadian David Cronenberg, Egoyan’s films tread anicy terrain of technological obsession and transitory relationships, not tomention automobile crashes.

But in “The Sweet Hereafter”, Egoyan trades in his video camera and hollowcharacters for the emotional depth of the novelistic tradition. Adaptationoffers Egoyan the solid groundwork that many audiences have felt weremissing in his earlier works. As the novel was structured by four firstperson narrations, Egoyan had to figure out how to cinematically translatefirst person without using voice-over. His answer was to structure the filmthrough the Mitchell Stephens character and use the Pied Piper story toencompass the other points of views. Egoyan’s choices have lead to anequivalent and inspired film, deeply visual and yet also very literary. I

indieWIRE:How was your experience acquiring the rights to the book?

Atom Egoyan: Difficult. Because when I first read the book it had a studiooption. It was a closed door. And it wasn’t available. Then a couple years,actually right after “Exotica“, I met Margaret Atwood at a party and westarted talking about books and I mentioned how much I loved the book andshe said, “Why don’t you talk to Russell?” And we met. And what Russelldisclosed to me in the meeting was that the studio option was due to berenewed in a couple months, but if I promised to make the film (because hewas so fed up with options that lead to no films), he would let me have theoption. So I made the promise. And the studio let it slip. So it was reallygreat timing.

iW:When did Fine Line get involved?

Egoyan: Fine Line got involved after the fact. It was finished. It wasinvited to Cannes.

iW:What was your experience with Miramax on “Exotica”?

Egoyan: Miramax did a really good job with “Exotica”. I thinkthey are a really great company. They were massively outbid by Fine Line. Alot of people expected Miramax would take this as well, but it just didn’twork out. And Miramax has a really busy slate too. The great thing aboutFine Line is they don’t have as many titles. And they really do give a lotof attention to each title.

iW:There’s an uneasiness in the film, almost throughout. As a director,are there specific things you are thinking about to create this?

Egoyan: Oh yeah. In this film, it’s pretty obvious. It’s about a busaccident. By withholding the accident, you create a lot of tension. Peopleexpect to see it off the top, but by not seeing and getting to know thekids and the community, and know that at some point you’re going to have tosee it, every time you see a bus moving through the snowy landscape, you’rereally on the edge of your seat.

iW:What about starting your protagonist trapped in a car wash?

Egoyan: Why I was attracted to that is, most of the time we’re driving in acar, we’re so aware of this responsibility, of being so aware of how we’reconducting this huge piece of machinery, and a car wash is one of the fewplaces where you can be in your car and it can be moving and you can haveno responsibility and it just looks after itself. There’s something sosoothing about it, it’s being cleaned, so you know something good ishappening, the sound of the car crash, it’s very much like a birth canal.It’s very wet, there’s motion, there’s water, there’s the sense of you’rein a womb moving towards light — and to have that disrupted, I find reallydisturbing. Suddenly to be in a place where you’re trapped in that verything you found soothing is scary.

iW:What about the different points of views that make up the film. Youmentioned before how this makes the events resonate in a deeper way?

Egoyan: The organization of experience in the film, a lot of the scenes,the key scenes of trauma, are shot not to elaborate the incident of whatwe’re seeing, but rather to show the experience of one of the maincharacters. It’s not the incident of the crash itself that is elaborated,but the experience of Billy Ansell, watching this as a father, from thedistance and feeling helpless.

iW:Let me ask you about this group of actors that in some ways has becomea company for you?

Egoyan: Filmmaking is all about a degree of surprise. You have to be ableto surprise yourself and it’s also great to surprise the people you knowand have them surprise you. It’s so great to see Arsinee as a hippie Mom orGabrielle Rose totally reinvent herself and nobody recognized BruceGreenwood from “Exotica” as Billy Ansell.

iW:Does it establish a certain comfort to your work?

Egoyan: Well, yeah, I guess it does. You know these people, you know whatthey’re parameters are, you know how they work, they know how I work. Thereis a shorthand. It takes less time to do certain things. When you’reworking on a limited production schedule, it’s a comfort to know that youknow the personalities involved, you know what they need as opposed tohaving to discover that and be surprised by that.

Zhao said with her Bass Reeves biopic, she’ll direct a more traditional cast like she did with her first-timers: “You can work with an actor in a certain way, you can create an environment like Terrence Malick has always done.”